the best way ive come up with to describe the stance is don't think of it as leaning back, think of it as staying perpendicular to your board. so if you are going downwind, you are standing straight up, if you are edging so hard that your board is straight up and down in the water, that means you're lying down in the ocean

so, you're not always lying back, especially in chop.. a lot of the time im at less than a 45° angle, since you can't just edge your way through waves

if you focus on staying perpendicular to your board and keeping your back straight, it feels more natural than just trying to get right into the posture you see everyone riding in

My guess is if someone is having trouble with their stance and attributes that to a difficulty staying upwind, then probably wise to go somewhere where the conditions are mainly flat water. That way it's easier to mess around with stance and not have waves to bother with. Cruising around waves and getting airborne off of them makes it hard to get comfortable with stance, if that's what one is working on. Just my opinion.

I now use a custom Nomad 142 and a 132. These two cover wind from 15 knots though to 40 knots.

I weigh 85kgs.

The design is rounded tips, big single concave. They have awesome pop, fast acceleration. For me at least the perfect combo. I've only been kiting a year, but 30 years windsurfing and 20 years wakeboarding experience has helped find my combo.

Thanks for all the advice. I'll soon get a chance to try it out. I've always done pretty well in the flat. Problem is it's a chore to find flat. I can get off work and walk over to the beach with chop, swell and wind shadows, but at least get a sesson in with minimal overhead.

BTW, as soon as I tried the Mako King I screamed upwind even in bad conditions and/or light wind. As soon as I had the confidence on the Mako, I screamed upwind on my TT. I just gotta get back to that.

Dyyylan, you might be right. I may be leaning a bit too far and too often. I'll look for the perpendicular.

Ontario, I've got 6 days of straight kiting in Maui next month. Hopfeully those experiences will translate at home in the chop.

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